Ipsum is the proposal for the next default theme, planned to be bundled in WordPress 7.2. It is an intentionally minimal blogblog (versus network, site) theme that centers on a blank canvas to make your own, with built-in room for creativity. The approach for this theme also marks a move away from year-based naming, based on direction from @matt. Going forward, default themes will have their own names and change when the design calls for it, not when the calendar does. The road to 7.2 is short, so we’re opening Ipsum for testing now—the sooner we get feedback, the more it will shape the release.

How we got here

Months ago, we began to develop the default theme, building real demo pages directly in the Editor rather than in Figma mockups. That work started as Mētis, a theme for writers, makers, and thinkers, designed to showcase the design possibilities GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ now offers. After reviewing the direction with Matt, we shifted: the default theme bundled with WordPress should be the simplest possible starting point, and the more expressive design can still stand.

There’s a principle behind this choice: build in public, and ship. Mētis is a powerful theme that’s diverse and opinionated, with lots of ways to stretch what’s there. However, Matt gave clear direction to go with a simpler blank canvas style approach that could appeal more quickly to more people to make their own. That’s why we picked a blank canvas blog design and are sharing it with the public for suggestions, instead of making Mētis the one. Real artists ship.

Mētis remains a separate theme that won’t ship with this release. Our new flagship theme will have its own post as soon as it’s ready to download and test.

About the design

Ipsum is a blank canvas built around the blogging experience, our proposal for what this year’s default theme should be. Named after lorem ipsum, the placeholder that fills a page until real content arrives, it is composed enough to stand on its own and to be transformed the moment people start writing.

It keeps the page quiet: dotted underlines from an editor’s pencil, a handful of typesets, and style variations that re-ink the whole page, images included. Every combination passes WCAGWCAG WCAG is an acronym for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These guidelines are helping make sure the internet is accessible to all people no matter how they would need to access the internet (screen-reader, keyboard only, etc) https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/. AA. Headers, heroes, and sidebars are there when you reach for them, but remain invisible when you just want to write.

What’s available today reflects the design work; development review is still ahead. The window before 7.2 is tight, so this is a focused ask: try it and tell us what breaks and what’s missing. We’ll fold in what we can before the release; what we can’t will shape the updates that follow, as it does for every default theme.

Development

As part of the 7.2 release, Carolina Nymark (@poena), Maggie Cabrera (@onemaggie), and Juanfra Aldasoro (@juanfra) are leading development, while Henrique Iamarino (@iamarinoh) is leading design and theme building. The current build reflects the design work; the formal development review comes next, folding in what we hear from you along the way—we look forward to your involvement throughout the process.

Learn more

For information about previous default themes, read the following posts:

• Twenty Twenty-Five
• Twenty Twenty-Four
• Twenty Twenty-Three
• Twenty Twenty-Two
• Twenty Twenty-One
• Twenty Twenty

Here are a few resources if you’re interested in learning more about BlockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. Themes and the Site Editor:

• Block Theme documentation
• Global Styles & theme.json documentation
• A Developers Guide to Block Themes
• Develop Your First Low-Code Block Theme

+make.wordpress.org/themes/

#7-2, #bundled-theme, #core-themes, #ipsum, #metis